


eat

by SingingShantiesAllTheWay, yakyuu_yarou



Series: wilde week 2020 [3]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Aftercare, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Character Turned Into Vampire, Consensual, Human/Vampire Relationship, Kink Negotiation, Other, Vampire Bites, no beta we die like romans, no edit watch as we fireball our own feet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:07:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27613250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SingingShantiesAllTheWay/pseuds/SingingShantiesAllTheWay, https://archiveofourown.org/users/yakyuu_yarou/pseuds/yakyuu_yarou
Summary: Wilde had been neglecting himself, and it wasn't subtle. Sasha had had enough.Written for Wilde Week 2020, Day 3.
Relationships: Sasha Racket & Oscar Wilde
Series: wilde week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2016050
Comments: 10
Kudos: 32
Collections: A Wilde Week 2020





	eat

**Author's Note:**

> We wrote this in a seven-hour long fever dream, and we hope you enjoy.
> 
> Prompt for today:  
> Day 3 - “One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them.”
> 
> Feast | **Hunger** | Treats

Enough, Sasha decided as she watched Wilde exit the kitchen with steps that were just a little uneven and a smirk that was just the slightest bit _off_ , was enough. She stared after him, chewing absently on the last bite of her sandwich, as Hamid and Grizzop returned to their conversation (it was a fight, really, but neither of the two would acknowledge that) and Azu went back to doing the dishes.

When Sasha silently slipped through the half-open kitchen door a few minutes later (her own plate added to the to-wash pile to Azu’s left), neither of the three so much as glanced at her.

Quietly, slowly, Sasha made her way up the stairs towards the bedrooms. She stopped at the top and for a long moment she longingly looked at her own door (locked, of course) before shaking her head and turning away from it, down the other direction of the hallway.

To where Wilde’s room was, separated from Hamid’s by one that had somehow stayed empty. (Sasha had thought to herself that they should leave it unoccupied just in case Zolf decided to come back after all, but it had been a thought without any hope behind it, and she wasn’t sure if any of the others shared it.)

She stalked down the corridor without a sound, but hesitated at the (unlocked, of course) door. She could _hear_ Wilde behind it, shifting something from somewhere to somewhere else, and the sound was oddly … comforting. As if she’d unconsciously expected him to just pass out on his bed once he closed the door behind him, or something—

—worse.

No use thinking about that for too long, though: there were sounds, and they _weren’t_ the sounds of someone taking care of paperwork, and so Sasha — perfectly soundlessly — pushed the door open just far enough to fit herself into the gap sideways and slide through.

She did not look at Wilde once inside, instead flicked her gaze over to his bed and the (few) belongings he had in the room.

Almost as few as she did, and Sasha had only her daggers.

“We’ve got to talk, Wilde,” she said to the bed, and then immediately frowned. _Great_ start, that, considering how damned _cagey_ the man was being.

Nothing for it.

“We’ve got to talk, ‘cos you can’t keep doing this. This … ‘I’m fine’ act, ‘cos we all _know_ it’s an act, you look like you’re gonna tip over if one of us walks past you wrong, and—” Sasha turned a little, just enough to look at Wilde, if not at all at his face.

“And I _worry_ , alright?”

It hadn’t been what she’d intended to say (that had been ‘and you’re turning into a liability’, because he’d proven time and time again that their mission, whatever that happened to be, mattered more to him than he did himself), but it was out now.

Carefully, Wilde slid the ledger he’d been about to open back into the leather valise open on his bed, and directed a smile at Sasha that he knew was positively ghastly.

“Hello Sasha,” he said as pleasantly as he could manage, “I thought I recognised your polite knock on the closed door to my personal and private chamber. Do come in; will you close the door behind you? Ah; I see you have already done both of those things.”

Wilde waved a hand to the only chair in the room, a stool in front of something that passed for a narrow writing-desk, and sank to a seat on his bedside.

“Have a seat, then,” he sighed, and began refastening the latches of the valise. _Please_ , he thought, _do not come any closer_ , and his unspoken prayer was answered when Sasha, for a wonder, did as invited, and perched atop the stool, well out of arms’ reach. Wilde did not look up at her as he fastened the buckles with a soft chime of metal. “I appreciate your concern, Sasha, and much as I would prefer it otherwise, I _can_ , in fact, ‘keep doing this’, because there is no alternative. The work I am doing- _we_ are doing - _must be done_ and there is no-one else to do it. To stop is to fail.”

It was not the argument she had made, and he damn well knew it, but perhaps the sidestep would be sufficient - and obvious enough - that she’d take the hint and leave well enough alone. Or, failing that, just _leave_.

Wilde needed Sasha to leave. Every second she stayed in his vicinity was another grain of sand rasping against his frayed and weariness-ragged nerves, and he could have wept with it.

She smelled _so fucking good._

It had been so much easier when she’d been dead. When he hadn’t been.

Wilde lifted his hands to scrub at his face, pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes, and bent to rest his elbows against his knees, propping his head against his hands.

“I _do_ appreciate your concern,” he repeated, more genuinely this time, even if sincerity was only open weariness. “I- please don’t worry. I’m… as well as I can be.” _Now_ he looked up at her, and the ghastly smile was back, and a glint of something that might have been humour in his voice. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

 _Joke’s on you, sir_ , he thought bitterly.

Sasha’s eyebrows drew together to form an expression that in someone else might’ve been called _pinched_ , but on her gaunt, pale face, it was just … concerned. She settled a little more firmly onto the stool, and she did something she’d seen (and, frankly, felt) Wilde do quite often: she let her gaze settle on him, _really_ settle, and _looked_.

This close (because the room wasn’t big, and even at opposite ends of it they were closer than they’d been in the kitchen), Wilde looked— he looked awful. Far too thin, far too pale even for someone as poshly light-shy as him, something weirdly restless to the way he moved, as if there was some constant tension in his muscles that he couldn’t let go of.

Her frown deepened.

“The work needs doing,” she muttered, “and it’ll get done. _If_ you’re ‘round to keep us in line. Won’t be able to do that when y’tip over like- like a sack of waterlogged potatoes. Will you?”

She did not wait for an answer. Instead, Sasha pushed off of her stool and slunk across the room (it was just a few steps for her, and would probably have been just _one_ for Wilde, maybe two, tall bastard that he was) until she stood right in front of him. _Close_ to him, closer than she felt comfortable with, but— this mattered enough.

“Yeah, see, except you’re _not_ ,” she said, staring pointedly at the heavy bags beneath his eyes and lingering on the fine tremor in his delicate hands. “Y’don’t sleep enough, if you do at all, y’said so yourself, just now. You don’t _eat_. Gods’ sakes, Wilde, you have to _eat_.”

Her eyes, dark with worry and sharp with determination and discomfort, flicked up to Wilde’s (oddly bright — almost feverish — and indeterminate in colour) and refused to move away again even when the prolonged contact made her left hand twitch for one of her daggers.

Not to threaten him with (she would have, though, if she’d thought the odds of it doing anything at all decent enough), just to … have.

Sasha made a decision.

“I am not,” she muttered darkly, planting her feet very firmly on the rough stone floor beneath her, “leaving until y’eat.”

 _Look away look away look_ **_away_ **-

Wilde didn’t look away, despite the shrieking desperation of something at the back of his mind, something he recognised as _him_ , in a way. He didn’t look away, but stared at Sasha (even seated, he was nearly as tall as she, and that brought an odd unfurling of _something_ warm and frightening deep in his gut), and let her have the full weight of his regard. It was, he knew, heavy, weightier now even than it had been before his ...encounter, and if she would not listen to perfectly polite and logical reason, maybe she’d listen to fear.

“Sasha,” he said softly, and let _that_ be as heavy as his attention on her face, let the odd harmonics he tried so hard to hide stain his voice just a little, “Sasha, I need you to step. Back. Please.”

 _Please move away for the love of all the gods if you care as much as you say you do_ **_please move away from me_ ** _-_

“I will eat. I eat every day, a little. Enough. I prefer not to share meals right now; there is too much to be done and eating in here means I can work as I do.”

Wilde waved to an empty plate on the desk she’d been sitting nearby. It had held toast and a muffin from that morning’s breakfast, and the crumbs were still in evidence there. She didn’t need to know he’d fed it to pigeons while he worked earlier that evening.

“ _I'_ _m fine_ ,” he repeated. “Or as fine as it’s possible to be, right now. Please don’t concern yourself about me; there are larger problems that require our focus.”

_Go. Away._

“No.”

Sasha’s voice, she realised with a quick, quiet stab of satisfaction, wasn’t wavering. Yet, maybe, because whatever Wilde’s voice had just done had sent a spike of cold terror down her spine, a violent impulse to back off that she was reasonably sure wasn’t actually _hers_.

“No, I won’t turn away or move back or leave and let you keep stewing in this bubble of … of neglecting yourself because y’think it’s the right thing to do or. Whatever.” She faltered, just a little, lost her train of thought for a moment when her brain caught up with the way Wilde’s eyes were boring into hers, almost as if he were trying to bend her to his will with only the weight of his regard, and.

Sasha straightened a little, squared her shoulders as best she could, and tensed her fingers so they wouldn’t twitch _again_ , and she refused to look away, refused to let him _win_.

She wanted to. Badly. His gaze was so heavy it almost hurt, but she couldn’t. This mattered.

“And I won’t let you _lie_. Think I haven’t seen this before? Think none of th’other kids ever took their food and went away with it and got thinner and thinner by the day?” She shook her head, sharp and jerky and determined, and sullenly extended one hand to prod at Wilde’s chest (too thin, _way_ too thin) once.

“I know what y’re doing, Wilde. Stop it. _Eat._ ”

“ _No._ ”

He echoed her, let her own word reflect back to her and added his own emphasis to it, let the uncanny push of his nature _shove_ at her.

And Wilde, suddenly entirely too exhausted for this entire conversation, got to his feet, and let his height shove at her too. He was, he knew, supposed to be much larger than he was; knew that deprivation (deliberate and otherwise) had made him every bit as too-thin as Sasha accused him of being, but he knew as well that if he needed to, he could _seem_ larger. 

A lifetime of forging confidence had its uses.

“No, Sasha,” he continued, and took the single step forward that would bring them almost, but not quite, into actual contact, and was at once frustrated and impressed by her steadfast refusal to back away. “No, I can assure you, you do _not_ want me to eat. Because if I were to eat, right now, in your presence, there is only a single thing I might be able to do, and you. _Do not_. Want that.”

He could, Wilde thought, probably lift her. Could pick her up, carry her to the door, and shove her out it. She’d stab him, probably. Not that it would kill him, but it would be every bit as damning a revelation as-

-as just. Telling her.

 _Fuck_.

As though the thought knocked his knees out from beneath him, Wilde dropped to the bedside again, and once again buried his face in his hands.

“ _Please_ leave, Sasha. I don’t want to hurt you and I am rapidly running out of the ability _not to_.”

Why not? Why _not_ just tell her, he thought as he listened to her step closer against all his desperate warning to do precisely the opposite. What could it hurt?

Everything. It could bring his entire fragile world and work shattering around him, and he couldn’t risk that, couldn’t risk destroying something this important-

But he was already lifting his head, already turning to his face up to Sasha’s, already opening his mouth, already skinning his lips back in what might have been a snarl but was in fact only-

-only _showing her_. And _now_ she stepped back, and Wilde permitted himself a bitter smile. Too little, too late. It seemed a too-frequent portent, these days.

“Please,” he whispered again, “leave.”

Wilde was terrifying when he stood like that, too similar to other men she’d been this close to, hadn’t been able to run from, had had to withstand the presence of so they wouldn’t think her vulnerable and fragile and easily broken.

Except Wilde was nothing like that, was he. And he was even thinner than she’d assumed, now that she was close enough to feel the lack of body heat coming off of him (did that mean he was _sick_?) and staring up at him. His face was just as gaunt as hers, and she opened her mouth to point that out, to say ‘y’look a lot like me right now’ because that would surely have some effect, when he … sat again.

Just like that, it was just his voice and his eyes again, that and the weird things he was _saying_.

_‘—if I were to eat, right now, in your presence, there is only a single thing I might be able to do—’_

Sasha opened her mouth to ask what _that_ was supposed to mean just as Wilde did the same, and Sasha— simply _stared_ , for a moment, at the too-long, too-sharp, too- _b_ _right_ teeth he’d revealed, and she couldn’t stop the small, instinctive step backwards because _those aren’t human teeth, what the_ **_fuck_** **.**

Only one, though, and then her feet were firmly planted on the ground again as she continued to keep her eyes, wide and shocked now, fixed on his face and his smile and his _fucking teeth_.

(She’d read about this, once, in a book she’d snuck out because Eldarion had told her not to, and she hadn’t even _liked_ the book, not really, it had been too full of idiots and too empty of any _sense_ , but the description of teeth and mouths had _lingered_ , just enough for her to make the connection now.)

Wilde was a fucking vampire.

Sasha swallowed heavily at the realisation, as everything _else_ she’d tried to not remember flooded back all at once and left her sucking in a sharp, too-shallow breath.

“... so,” she muttered, shook her head again. She wrapped one arm around her middle and bit down hard on her lower lip as her mind raced, ran through his words again and again and again like she had through the alleyways of Other London, and eventually, it stopped.

Sasha straightened her back just a little, dropped her arm again, and stepped forward, sinking heavily onto the bed next to Wilde. Close enough to yet again feel the coolness of him (not as surprising anymore, now), but not close enough to touch.

“I’m staying,” she said, staring at her knees before she glanced up, met his eyes again. Her expression was tight and scared, she knew, but she was also determined.

“And you’ll eat.”

“ _Damn it,_ Sasha,” Wilde hissed, and slid away from her on the bedside, putting distance (not enough; he could still reach her, couldn’t get far enough away from her) between them. He ignored the stubborn tension in her shoulders when he moved.

Her refusal to be cowed despite her obvious terror, was one of her most sterling qualities, and Wilde had always admired it, had found it incredibly useful. It was _bloody annoying_ , now… even as it was incredibly tempting.

He was, he could admit, desperately hungry.

The silence piled up around them, gravid with all the things he was not saying.

“If I do this,” Wilde finally whispered, and shut his eyes tight, did not let himself look at her while he spoke. “If I do this, there have to be ...rules. I _do not want to hurt you_ , Sasha. Out of- out of everyone left in my life, I do not want to harm you.”

He heard her move, but didn’t bother to track it.

“First, you should know - it won’t… _hurt_ , really, not after the actual- well, bite.” Wilde smiled, wry and a bit off-kilter. “My experience of it was quite pleasurable, in fact. If you are uncomfortable with that, say so now, and leave. I won’t stop you, of _course I won’t_ stop you.”

Now, Wilde opened his eyes, turned his head to look at Sasha; she’d moved closer again, closed the distance between them and sat facing him, hugging her knees. She could stare a man down with the best of them, he thought absently and permitted himself the little curl of pride- however unwarranted; he’d had nothing to do with _that_ \- that it occasioned.

“The second thing you should know… I don’t want to harm you but I might not be able to do otherwise.” His gaze flicked from her face to where he knew at least one of her wickedly sharp, perfectly honed daggers rested, and back up. “I want you to have a dagger ready, and _use it_ if necessary.”

His smile was hollow and full to the brim with self-loathing.

“I promise you won’t kill me. But you’ll _stop_ me, and it’s enough.”

“‘m not leaving,” Sasha muttered darkly, glaring at Wilde over the half-barrier of her knees. (It wouldn’t do much good, she now knew, if he _really_ wanted to get at her, but the point was that he didn’t want that.)

“‘m not leaving you to keep starvin’ yourself, so stop trying to convince me that’s what I want.” Her lips twisted into something she hoped was determination to cover the new spark of fear in her gut, not at the mention of pain but of pleasure.

He’d not said what _kind_ of pleasure, but this was Wilde. She could guess. And sure, yeah, it made her uncomfortable to think about, at least a little, but— the alternative was watching her— someone she maybe cared about _starve_. When she could help, and it’d cost her very little because he’d explicitly asked her to be ready to defend herself.

Silently, without so much as a rustle of fabric, Sasha unfurled to sit cross-legged instead, still facing Wilde but less physically defensive, now. She reached into her jacket, into a different pocket than the one he’d stared at, and pulled out a small, wicked thing of a dagger, tiny enough to almost be a knife that could be hidden against her palm until she needed it.

She carefully placed it in her lap, then shrugged out of her jacket (she let it drop off the side of the bed, not even looking to see where it fell), staring at Wilde all the way. _I’m certain_ , all of it said, and _I’m certain_ the line of her lips said as she picked the dagger back up and let it shift into place in her palm.

“I’ll make y’stop,” she promised quietly, then leaned forward a little. She’d meant to change position further, but she suddenly realised she had no idea how Wilde … wanted her.

“... how d’you—” _want_ “—need me?”

In truth, Wilde wasn’t certain how to answer that question, and he just _watched_ Sasha for a long moment, willing his hunger back and away, willing it _down_ for just a few minutes more, just a few minutes, while he considered how this would be least traumatic for his fr- for Sasha.

Wilde came to a decision and moved back on the bed, until he was sitting with his back to the wall.

“Come here,” he said softly, and added, “-please. Sit in front of me. You’ll… probably want help staying upright. I can do that for you.”

Her hesitation was understandable, and her trust, when she acquiesced only a moment later, arrowed through him like one of her knives. Wilde held himself perfectly still (probably _too_ perfectly, but she knew, there was little point hiding his nature from her now) while she turned her back, settled in front of him, and he made sure that he was sitting so she could easily reach the artery stretched long and close to the surface of his inner thigh.

She was trembling, and Wilde hated himself for it.

Carefully, he reached around her to find her hand, the wicked little blessing of a dagger couched within it, and he brought it to rest the point against his thigh.

“Do not hesitate to use it,” he whispered in her ear.

 _Fuck. She smelled so good, so tempting, right there right there right_ **_there-_ **

“If you are having any doubts, Sasha,” he said quietly, “now is the time to voice them.”

It felt weird, sitting like this, with her legs half-bent just to give herself a _little_ more support as she carefully settled back just a bit more, not quite enough to have her back touch his chest but enough to once again be perfectly aware of the lack of warmth from his body.

She was still trembling, and she hated herself for it for a moment, because this was terrifying, yes, but this was about as safe as something like it could ever be.

Sasha took a deep, shaky breath and slowly let it out again through her nostrils, closing her eyes for just a moment because she knew Wilde couldn’t see her, couldn’t worry about it.

“I’ll stab you,” she tried to mutter, but it came out as more of a croak, and she inwardly cursed herself because that had been intended as a _joke_ , as a reassurance, and _damn it_.

At least, she thought, he was just as nervous, in his own way, just as scared. That _did_ help, somehow, and her next breath was still shaky and sharp, but a little deeper, a little surer.

“No doubts.” She whispered it this time, unwilling to risk another embarrassing (or worse, counterproductive) crack or splinter in her voice, and before she could think about it, she squeezed Wilde’s thigh around the dagger, with just her fingertips, but she hoped fervently that he would understand.

Then, deciding that if she waited any longer than this, they’d likely _both_ get cold feet (Wilde certainly would, and the more uncertain he was, the jumpier she could feel herself growing), Sasha finally leaned back (still not quite close enough to touch, but _barely_ ) and tilted her head to the side and back to bare her neck.

“Do it.” There was no air behind it, but there didn’t need to be.

Wilde pulled in a long and shivering breath, and withdrew his hand from Sasha’s to loosely drape it around her waist instead, barely touching. His breath drifted over the slim column of her throat on his exhale, and he bent his head to rest his mouth against her skin - not a kiss, but a prelude.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered; the light press of his lips vanished, replaced with the cool ivory of needlesharp fangs (they almost _hurt_ with his hunger, an ache that burrowed deep and demanded the satisfaction that was _right there_ ). Another half-choked breath, and Wilde-

- _bit_ -

-and oh _gods_ the indescribable flood washing over his tongue nearly swept away his reason: the blood, copper-sweet and searing, carrying the life, the warmth of her, feeding him everything that was _Sasha_ via twinned puncture wounds through the vein and it was-

-perfect.

Wilde’s lips were on her neck, and Sasha tensed — just for a butterfly-wingbeat of a moment, couldn’t help it because it was such a foreign thing, this, and so painfully gentle that she wanted to shiver with it even as a part of her wanted to pull away and examine the strangeness of it.

No time for that, though, not when a half-breath (his) later there was white-hot pinprick pain shooting down her spine, liquid and terrible even though she’d _seen_ his fangs, knew they weren’t large things, made to puncture, not to rip, but the bite felt larger somehow, more significant, and Sasha gasped with the force of it ricocheting off her ribcage.

She gasped again, couldn’t help it, and this time when she drew in air and Wilde drew on her blood — _her blood_ , coaxed right out of her body with a gentleness that _ached_ —, she drew in something else with it, something warm and sparking that chased along the same paths as the pain but was wholly and indescribably different.

Sasha shivered, more heavily this time, and was strangely grateful for Wilde’s arm around her and his cool stability at her back, because all of a sudden she had to close her eyes again to keep breathing as goosebumps prickled on the skin of her arms, the back of her neck, even her scalp. She was too-aware of every part of her, of her limbs where they were folded oddly or hung limply at her side, and she thought she understood what Wilde had meant by _pleasurable_ as the sparky, odd warmth travelled further through her, from her neck down into her belly where it melted away the fear, and then a little lower still, low enough to gently simmer inside her as she felt him drag another swallow of blood from the wounds.

Wilde, with patient care, held still behind Sasha while she tensed, and tightened his grip just enough, when she softened, to support her, cautious lest she feel trapped ( _keep her close_ , his instincts hissed; _do not let her escape-_ and he ignored them because this was Sasha and he had not lied to her, he _would not harm her_ , her least of all the people he had left to him).

She was so warm, held against the sheltering curve of his body, the heat of her blood a blessing across his tongue, and Wilde made some low and wanting noise, somewhere between a growl and a moan, that thrummed in his chest and against Sasha’s throat where he fed, starving and desperately careful lest his starvation lead to something tragic.

But as predicted, Sasha was in no pain at all; the tiny movements she made against him were proof enough of that to assuage Wilde’s worry, if not his guilt. And her enjoyment served as something of an anchor, something to snag in his awareness and hold him tethered against his own bliss threatening to wash reason and presence away in the tide of finally, _finally feeding_ as he ought _gods_ it had been so long-

He had no idea how much time had passed, Wilde realised, and the sudden spear of cold dread down his spine made him gasp against Sasha’s throat. He pulled her in closer against himself, closed his mouth over her throat again- not to feed this time, but to simply press his tongue to the wounds, pressure to stop the blood, to let them begin to heal as her body ought. He let his awareness of time slip again, marking it by the slowing of Sasha’s bleeding and the rhythmic thrum of her heartbeat, rather than mundane seconds and minutes.

The gentle, comforting warmth (heat?) inside her swelled and ebbed with the pattern of Wilde’s swallows, and with every passing moment she could feel her body grow a little heavier, a little looser in his arms.

She should, she thought distantly, have been scared, but this was _Wilde_ who had seemed horrified at the thought of hurting her, who had been hurting himself rather than risk any one of them, and who currently had her weapon against his leg.

No, Sasha decided, she was not scared of him, or of this, so she let herself relax, let herself melt like overly expensive honey in the midday sun, and let Wilde carry her weight while the heat in her stomach simmered gently, growing slowly yet inexorably hotter the more he drank.

She lost track of time, drifting in a warm fog of rhythmic pulls on her heart and her blood and the sparks cascading along her nerves with every renewed drag.

There was, eventually, a change, a shift: Wilde was not sucking but very gently _pressing_ , and that, too, felt _good_ now, not strange at all anymore, and Sasha whined a little, the sound no more than a slightly heavy breath shaped around nothing, and sank a little heavier against his chest.

He was so _cool_ to the touch, and it made her feel like she was (gently, comfortably) burning.

Eventually, the bleeding at Sasha’s throat eased to a trickle, then a barely-seeping memory of the taste of her, and Wilde lifted his mouth from her skin, let his head tip back to rest against the wall behind him. He did not relinquish his hold on Sasha, knew from his own experience she would not be in any shape for self-direction. Not yet.

He shifted, though, to settle Sasha more comfortably, more _naturally_ , to give her something like safe space - as much as he could conceivably provide, at least, given who and _what_ he was - and after a moment to let her come back to herself, Wilde murmured, “-all right, Sasha?” He did not resist the impulse to bend and press a breath of a kiss to her temple. “I didn’t hurt you? You will need food soon, and water - I took… more than I ought to have done. But rest first.” He hesitated, then whispered, “-do you need anything else?”

The haze was … not lifting, not exactly, but parting just a little, barely enough to let Wilde’s words drift through and in until they made sense. She made another quiet noise in response, something softened and warm as she sank back to lean against him even more fully.

To _rest_ , as he’d suggested.

There was still heat inside her, but it was spreading, dispersing into a kind of diffuse warmth that was ... really nice, actually.

“‘m fine,” she murmured, the words just a little slurred, and her eyes did not open, although her eyebrows drew together momentarily at the touch of cool lips to her skin.

“‘m warm. Really warm, but a good warm. Y’re cool. ‘s nice. Stay?”

Wilde found himself, against his own expectations, smiling, a warm and contented thing that nearly matched Sasha’s muzzy words and loose form against him.

“Stay,” he confirmed, and breathed another kiss against her temple.

The room settled into a comfortable silence around them, and Wilde fell into stillness to match. After a moment, without thinking about what he was doing and without _worrying_ about it, he drew a quiet breath and began, softly, to sing: aimless, all but tuneless, something gentle and sweet and _safe_ to cocoon his agen- his _friend_ , while she half-dozed, while she recovered from the gift she had granted him.

It was the least he could do.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading, we hope you enjoyed <3


End file.
